World War 1

Question 1

Transport reason for failure WW1

Answer 1

• 3/4 of railways had only a single track
• military trans could not travel more than 320 km a day, most filled with horses and fodder, commanders preoccupied with cavalry
• only 2 ports: Archangel frozen 6 months, Murmansk no railroad, supplies from Allies left in stockhouses

Question 2

Supplies reason for failure WW1

Answer 2

• 6.5 million men, 4.6 million rifles
• 7 million shells expected to last whole war
• state controlled factories made 9000 per month, needed 1000 per field gun
• after 4 months, stocks were empty
• only one factory of tannin (for boots), had been imported from Germany - had to wait for an order from US, meanwhile fought barefoot

Question 3

Corruption reason for failure WW1

Answer 3

• orders given to Petrograd plants friendly with govt
• provincial plants not used
• Putilov plant received a 113 million rouble contract, unale to deliver on time, 6 times average price - Putilov used money to subsidise lavish lifestyle

Question 4

Soldiers reason for failure WW1

Answer 4

• little training beyond First Levy to save money
• 1.8 million killed 1914, sent Second Levy in
• Great Retreat 1915, 1 million surrendered, tens of thousands deserted to the rear, turned to banditry
• By September 1915, the front line was 1/3rd that of start of war

Question 5

Command incompetency reason for failure WW1

Answer 5

• authority divided between War Ministry, Stavka and Front Command (split between North and South, North refused to send reinforcements to South for Carpathian offensive) – division between cavalry guard aristrocracy and modern military professionals
• 1909, deliberate policy to promote senior officers based on loyalty to Tsar (“Even in war, Nicholas struggled to assert his patrimonial autocracy” Figes)
  Brusilov offensive
• Evert and Kuropatkin not prepared to attack (scared to lose position)
• Tsar ignored daily requests to order offensive
• General Alexeev sent in Imperial Guards (elite), commanded by General Bezobrazov (favourite of court), who ignored Brusilov and sent them through an exposed swamp - German gun planes killed them all, core of finest fighting force lost

Question 6

Growth of wartime organizations WW1

Answer 6

Union of Zemstva
- Prince Lvov
- 8,000 affiliated institutions, several hundred thousand employees (zemgussars), budget of 2 billion roubles 1916
- “The civic spirit of February had its roots in the wartime activities of civic organizations” Figes
War Industries Committee set up in 1915, moved production to provincial firms

Question 7

Obstruction of civic organizations WW1

Answer 7

• Maklakov (minister of Interior) wanted to limit their independent powers, objected to labour brigades (80,000 men who dug graves + trenches) because public orgs can’t have own army
• December 1916, Protopopov banned the zemstvos meeting without police in attendance
• WIC status later downgraded, contracts back to Petrograd

Question 8

WW1 outbreak

Answer 8

• 30 July full mobilization
• wave of patriotism, strikes dropped
• socialists embraced it, but Lenin criticised, said workers should join together and war is caused by imperialism

Question 9

WW1 losses

Answer 9

• 1915, 2.5 million
• 25% sent to front without rifles
• end of 1916 over 14 million men had been mobilized in the empire
• almost half of the male rural labour force had been called up by the end of 1916
• most of the Russian provinces anything from one-third to two-thirds of the peasant households had lost their male workers

Question 10

WW1 radicalization of military

Answer 10

• old officer corps below the level of captain was almost completely wiped out
• generation of lower-ranking officers (what in the West would be called NCOs) was hastily trained to replace them
• unusual after the first year of the war for a front-line regiment of 3,000 men to have more than a dozen officers
• 60 per cent of the NCOs came from a peasant background, very few had more than four years’ education, and nearly all of them were in their early twenties
• “The war was thus a great democratizer”
• This was the radical military cohort — literate, upwardly mobile, socially disoriented and brutalized by war — who would lead the mutiny of February, the revolutionary soldiers’ committees, and eventually the drive to Soviet power during 1917

Question 11

Inflation outcome of WW1

Answer 11

• spent 15 billion roubles 1914-17
• had to borrow from foreign powers, which led to increased taxation
• printed more notes (money supply increased 8fold 1914-17)
• wages doubles, basic foodstuffs quadroupled in price
• devaluation of rouble led to peasants hoarding their grain
• 1915 Special Council est to purchase grain at fixed prices
• unregulated prices of manufactures now rose much faster than fixed prices of food
• price of rye up 47% in first two years of war
• price of a pair of boots increased by 334%, box of matches 500%
• “For many peasants life had never been so good as it was for them at the height of the war” Figes

Question 12

Food shortage outcome WW1

Answer 12

• 15-16 bumper crop
• food rotted in carriages
• 1916, 575 stations not capable of holding freight
• trucks tipped off lines to make way for moving trains
• Feb 1917, Petrograd needed 300 wagons of grain, got 1000 (railways frozen by coldest winter in years)
• calorie intake of unskilled workers fell by a quarter 1914-16
• infant mortality doubles
• crime rates tripled

Question 13

Dissatisfaction re food WW1

Answer 13

• eve of rev, average woman spends 40 hours in bread queue a week
• “The Feb Rev was born in the bread queue”
• ban on vodka “nothing less than a disaster which in no small way contributed to the downfall of the old regime”, created resentment of higher classes (liquers available)